A Supergiant Star Lights Up the Creepy Witch Head Nebula

If you glance up at the constellation Orion during winter, you cannot miss Rigel. It is a dazzling blue supergiant star shining with the brightness of tens of thousands of suns. But right near Rigel sits something much spookier and harder to spot with just your eyes: a massive cloud of interstellar gas and dust nicknamed the Witch Head Nebula.

Officially cataloged as IC 2118, this cloud looks eerily like the profile of a wicked fairytale witch shouting into the void. What makes the nebula glow is not its own light. Instead, it is a classic reflection nebula. Fine particles of cosmic dust bounce Rigel's intense starlight back toward Earth, lighting up the spooky silhouette across hundreds of light-years.